Prisons are a central feature of the modern justice system, but decisions made on behalf of improving law & order aren't necessarily beneficial for the smooth and efficient running of prisons. One interesting example of this is how increased arrests and longer prison sentences can create overcrowding in prisons - overcrowding which may make all aspects of prison life more difficult.

In Hitler’s Prisons: Legal Terror in Nazi Germany, Nikolaus Wachsmann writes:

[P]enal institutions in Nazi Germany did not always live up to the disciplinarian ideal perpetuated in newspapers, speeches, prison journals and the regulations. The gap between this ideal and the reality was often an unintended consequence of the new penal policies.

As it turned out, the strict sentencing of the German courts undermined strict discipline inside, because massive overcrowding, the direct result of the courts’ eagerness, made it more difficult to control the prisoners and also increased tensions between inmates.

Some prison authorities responded by ordering daily searches of the cells. More warders were equipped with guns and even prison chaplains took part in shooting practice to foils escape attempts.

If prisons exist merely to punish, then overcrowding doesn’t hinder that particular purpose but it will hinder prison officials’ ability to administer the prison and punish effectively. If prisons exist for other purposes, like rehabilitation, then that purpose will be hindered alongside officials’ ability to get their jobs done. Overcrowding, therefore, doesn’t serve anyone’s interests — conservative or liberal. It’s just a bad idea which should be avoided.

Unfortunately, it’s unavoidable when politicians decide to “get tough” on crime by arresting more people and keeping them in jail longer. Such actions make politicians look good, but not if they also have to spend more money on new prison construction, more guards, more administrators, more parole officers, etc. This will mean either higher taxes or less money for other projects — if not both.

Get-tough programs are usually just for public consumption, designed to help politicians look good and get re-elected. Sometimes, as in the case of the Nazis, they also serve to create scapegoats for the powerful to transfer people’s feelings of insecurity to and perhaps establish greater social cohesion against an internal “enemy.”

For all these reasons, the overcrowding in prisons really doesn’t matter — whether punishment or rehabilitation are hindered, it’s unimportant because neither were the purpose of getting tougher on crime. When politicians enact policies without apparent regard for the consequence, and indeed without apparently thinking about the consequences at all, they demonstrate such gross irresponsibility that they shouldn’t be permitted in elected or appointed office ever again.

 

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